Fucking in the Streets

My Ugly Valentine’s

Without getting too into it, I’m not really feeling the holiday this
year. So here are my top five songs for bumming out this Valentine’s
Day (yours may vary):

Mount Eerie – “Moon Sequel
This
song—taken from the spare, lo-fi recording Live in
Copenhagen—updates and rebukes and violently empties outs the
romanticism of the old favorite Microphones song “The Moon.” Its simple
refrain of “you’re gone” repeats 21 times until it becomes an almost
nonsensical, animal mantra. And then even that gives way, “But am I
lying? Don’t I have you in my mind the entire time?” to something
that’s simultaneously an expression of loss and a lament for the fact
that even loss loses its romance, not that that means you won’t still
be haunted by its shape.

Hot Chip – “Crap Kraft Dinner”
Even if you don’t have a lost love with a fondness for
prepackaged mac-and-cheese dinners (the odd emotional object of this
song), this song should still get to you. The opening variations of the
line “All the people I love are here,” sung in a frail, melancholy
falsetto, sound like they could be describing either a crowded but
lonely house party or a memory always populated by all these loved ones
even when they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone,
etc.

Carissa’s Wierd – “Lazy Eyelids”
Pretty much
anything by Carissa’s Wierd would work for this purpose (though some
songs, like “All Apologies and Smiles, Yours Truly, Ugly Valentine,”
are more obvious than others), but lately I’ve been really feeling the
glacially unfolding ballad “Lazy Eyelids.” It’s maybe less catchy or
lyrically insistent than some of the band’s other songs, but its slow,
steady build and eventual climax of male and female voices singing
clashing, overlapping lyrics, backed by acoustic-guitar strumming and
distant drums and violin is as subtly great as anything they’ve done.
The piano coda is a nice palate cleanser, too.

Jawbreaker –
“In Sadding Around”
So many great, gut-wrenching lines in this
song—”Sleeping off the last five years takes another five”…
“We’re breaking up every single night”… “It’s a long way down again,”
all sung in a kind of free-falling, bottomless, broken howl while the
bass, guitars, and drums churn away, bleak but just almost
upbeat.

Animal Collective – “Peacebone”
Speaking of
palate cleansers, this one’s for looking up, for trying to stay young
and wild-eyed and hopeful even though you’re fucked and sad and growing
old. “An obsession with the past is like a dead fly/And just a few
things are related to the old times.” Much of Animal Collective’s new
album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, mines such veins, but this
song from Strawberry Jam, reevaluated on the merits of
Merriweather, is doing it for me right now just as well.